Clooney Hits Town With A New Film

The 82nd Venice Film Festival splashed off on July 27 with the Festival’s august lifetime achievement award going to Los-Angeles-based German director Werner Herzog, who was praised by presenter Francis Ford Coppola as having an historic, one-of-a-kind legacy. Never one to rest on his laurels, in Venice Herzog only augmented his (to-date) forty-odd films with the premiere of his most recent film, Ghost Elephants, an out-of-competition documentary of South African naturalist Dr. Steve Boyes’ quest to extract DNA from a legendary herd of elephants who have made their home in Angola’s enormously forbidding high forest of Lisima. Below, from left, Lena Herzog, Francis Ford Coppola and Werner Herzog are arm-in-arm on the red carpet en route into the ceremony. In Venice this year, the smart kids are definitely in town.

In fact, the smart kids were also out in force in the form of Noah Baumbach and his ensemble cast for his film Jay Kelly, pictured below, from left, Billy Crudup, Laura Dern, director Baumbach, Adam Sandler and not least, noted director Greta Gerwig, whose cameo as Adam Sandler’s character’s wife brings a zippy bit of shtick to her real-life husband’s film.

Pictured top, the missing actor at the August 28 photocall, one George Clooney, fresh from his entertaining the Jay Kelly principals for a couple of days at his Lago Como villa and looking every bit reigning American expat-on-the-Med. Perhaps it goes without saying, or perhaps not, but in front of the camera this go-around, Clooney plays the titular Jay Kelly, an extremely famous actor who, most amusingly, questions his sense of self.

Below, a spritzy shot of Sandler en deshabille, is clearly dressing for the weather, and pleasing not a few onlookers as he disembarks in Venice on arrival from Como. Yes, Sandler, Gerwig, Baumbach, Clooney, Dern, Crudup et al are obviously a high-end American tourists of the grand sort, but exactly zero local groups are exerting themselves (to date) to protest their arrival, their film premiere, or their stay in town. Because the Festival, despite its flash, is 82 years young and local, too.

In re Sandler’s arrival-wear: While it’s doubtful that there’s any spare square footage for streetcorner basketball courts as found in New York on Venice’s arthritically cramped canals — although there could well be a half-court on a nearby superyacht, as on Larry Ellison’s Musashi — but either way, just in case he runs across one, Sandler is not giving up an inch of his rampant American-ness in his regulation ultrabaggy below-the-knee game shorts and his zippy black-and-pink high tops. The well-worked chewing gum cud peeking out is an excellent finishing touch. Man is a baller. Good travel look, Adam Sandler!

Laura Dern channels sheer nautical elegance in her double-cuffed blouse, pictured below disembarking in Venice from the Clooney Villa Oleander commute. Dark-wash stovepipes, discreet handbag, some fine shades, and the unbeatable look is windblown and truly fresh-off-the-boat.